Thursday, December 27, 2012

(And should we put the question to Nigel Farage?)
While accepting the Nobel Peace Prize for the European Union in Oslo’s City Hall a couple of weeks ago, Herman Van Rompuy quoted Abraham Lincoln in his acceptance speech.

As reported by Andrew Higgins in the
New York Times, the president of the European
Council said: “If I can borrow the words of
Abraham Lincoln at the time of another continental test, what is being
assessed today is whether that union, or any union so conceived and so
dedicated, can long endure.”

Besieged by economic woes and insistent questions about its future, the European Union
accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday with calls for further
integration and a plea to remember the words of Abraham Lincoln as he
addressed a divided nation at Gettysburg.

The prize ceremony, held in Oslo’s City Hall and attended by 20 European leaders as well as Norway’s royal family, brought a rare respite from the gloom that has settled on the European Union since the Greek debt crisis
exploded three years ago, unleashing doubt about the long-term
viability of the euro and about an edifice of European institutions
built up over more than half a century to promote an ever closer union.

Unemployment — now at over 25 percent in Greece and Spain
— and sputtering economic growth across the 27-nation bloc are “putting
the political bonds of our union to the test,” Herman Van Rompuy,
president of the European Council, said in his acceptance speech. “If I
can borrow the words of Abraham Lincoln at the time of another
continental test, what is being assessed today is whether that union, or
any union so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The European Union, said Mr. Van Rompuy, will “answer with our deeds, confident we will succeed.”

“We are working very hard to overcome the difficulties, to restore growth and jobs,” he continued.

Aside from economic misery, the most serious threat to the bloc so far
is growing pressure in Britain for a referendum on whether to pull out
of the union. The British prime minister, David Cameron, did not attend
the ceremony, but most other European leaders showed up, including
Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and the French president, François
Hollande, who sat next to each other and whose countries, once bitter
enemies, have been the main motors driving European integration.

Mr. Van Rompuy’s comparison of the European Union to the United States
is likely to irritate critics of the European Union, who reject efforts
to push European nations to surrender more sovereignty in pursuit of
what champions of a federal European state hope will one day be a United
States of Europe.

Just how far Europe is from such a goal, however, was made clear by the
presence of three Union presidents in Oslo. In addition to Mr. Van
Rompuy, whose European Council represents the leaders of the union’s
member states, there was José Manuel Barroso, president of the European
Commission, the bloc’s main administrative and policy-making arm, and
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament.

Instead of the customary Nobel lecture delivered by the winner, Mr. Van
Rompuy and Mr. Barroso each read parts of what Thorbjorn Jagland,
chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, described as “one speech but
two chapters.”

Hailing the European Union for helping bring peace to Europe after
repeated wars, Mr. Jagland said, “What this continent has achieved is
truly fantastic, from being a continent of war to becoming a continent
of peace.”

Mr. Barroso spoke of the horrors of past wars and tyranny and Europe’s
efforts to overcome them through the building of supranational
institutions, which began in 1951
with the establishment of the European
Coal and Steel Community by France, Germany and four other countries.
But he also cited the current conflict in Syria, describing it as a
“stain on the world’s conscience” that other nations have “a moral duty”
to address. The European Union’s member states are themselves divided
about how far to go in supporting opponents of Bashar al-Assad, the
Syrian president.

The decision to honor the European Union with the Nobel Peace Prize
stirred widespread criticism in Norway, whose citizens have twice voted
not to join the union. On the eve of Monday’s award ceremony, peace
activists and supporters of left-wing political groups paraded through
the streets of Oslo, carrying flaming torches and chanting, “The E.U. is
not a worthy winner.”

Many peace activists say they have no problem with European integration
but question whether the union has lived up to conditions laid down by
Alfred Nobel, the 19th-century Swedish industrialist who bequeathed the
peace prize and four other Nobel Prizes.